The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#5201
Andrea del Verrocchio
1435 - 1488 (53 years)
Andrea del Verrocchio , born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, was a sculptor, Italian painter and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence. He apparently became known as Verrocchio after the surname of his master, a goldsmith. Few paintings are attributed to him with certainty, but important painters were trained at his workshop. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi. His greatest importance was as a sculptor and his last work, the Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, is generally accepted as a masterpiece.
Go to Profile#5202
Michael John Rand
#88152
Overall Influence
#5203
Geoffrey Sayre-McCord
#60901
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Geoffrey Sayre-McCord is an American philosopher who works in moral theory, ethics, meta-ethics, the history of ethics and epistemology. He teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also the director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society.
Go to Profile#5204
Hideyo Noguchi
1876 - 1928 (52 years)
Hideyo Noguchi, also known as Seisaku Noguchi, was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who in 1911 discovered the agent of syphilis as the cause of progressive paralytic disease. Early life Noguchi Hideyo, whose childhood name was Seisaku Noguchi, was born to a family of farmers for generations in Inawashiro, Fukushima prefecture in 1876. When he was one and a half years old, he fell into a fireplace and suffered a burn injury on his left hand. There was no doctor in the small village, but one of the men examined the boy. "The fingers of the left hand are mostly gone," he said, "and the left a...
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Ömer Naci Soykan
#52702
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Ömer Naci Soykan was a Turkish philosopher. Life He was born in 1945. He graduated from Trabzon High School in 1965. He studied Philosophy, Sociology, Ancient Greek and Latin in İstanbul University during his undergraduate period from 1965 to 1971. He was a visiting student in Hamburg University from 1969 to 1971. Soykan received his PhD in 1982 with his thesis entitled as “Forms of Being and Art in Schelling.” In the same year, he began to lecture in Mimar Sinan University. He worked as an assistant professor in Sociology Department of İnönü University from 1984 to 1986. He joined in Sociology Department of Mimar Sinan University in 1986.
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J. Caleb Clanton
#88171
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
J. Caleb Clanton was Professor of Philosophy at Lipscomb University. He taught previously at Vanderbilt University and Pepperdine University. In May 2023 he was named director of the Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership and Mann Family Professor in Ethics and Leadership at Samford University. Clanton is known for his research on philosophy of religion and moral philosophy.
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Peter Pagin
#57382
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Peter Pagin is Professor of Philosophy at Stockholm University. He is a specialist in the philosophy of language and has worked extensively on foundational issues in semantics and on technical and philosophical problems about the compositionality of meaning.
Go to Profile#5208
Ronald A. Dubner
#88244
Overall Influence
#5209
Ernest C. Borden
#88248
Overall Influence
#5210
Darío Sztajnszrajber
#51611
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Darío Gabriel Sztajnszrajber , also known as Darío Szeta, is an Argentine philosopher, essayist, teacher, and television presenter. Personal life Sztajnszrajber was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a family of Polish descent. According to Sztajnszrajber himself, his surname means "the one who writes in stone". His family is Jewish, although he's a self-proclaimed agnostic. His brother, Mauro Szeta, is a journalist who specializes in police matters. Sztajnszrajber is a supporter of the football club Estudiantes.
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Ravindra Gupta
#35354
Overall Influence
Professor Ravindra "Ravi" Kumar Gupta is a professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease at the University of Cambridge. He is also a member of the faculty of the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa.
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Alan Seymour Cohen
#88307
Overall Influence
#5213
Nick Black
#76851
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sir Nicholas Andrew Black is a British physician and health services researcher. Black studied medicine at the University of Birmingham, graduating in 1974, worked for Save the Children Fund in Nepal for 18 months before undertaking a doctorate and training in public health at Oxford from 1978 to 1982. He was then a lecturer at the Open University for three years, writing a distance-learning course 'Health and Disease' with biologists, sociologists and economists.
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William Bosworth Castle
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
William Bosworth Castle was an American physician and physiologist who transformed hematology from a "descriptive art to a dynamic interdisciplinary science." Life Castle was born to William E. Castle and his wife in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a professor of zoology at Harvard, a pioneer in mammalian genetics, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The young Castle was educated in local schools and entered Harvard College in 1914. At the end of his third year of college, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School. Upon graduating from medical school, he did a medical ...
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Andreas Joseph Hofmann
1752 - 1849 (97 years)
Andreas Joseph Hofmann was a German philosopher and revolutionary active in the Republic of Mainz. As Chairman of the Rhenish-German National Convention, the earliest parliament in Germany based on the principle of popular sovereignty, he proclaimed the first republican state in Germany, the Rhenish-German Free State, on 18 March 1793. A strong supporter of the French Revolution, he argued for an accession of all German territory west of the Rhine to France and served in the administration of the department Mont-Tonnerre under the French Directory and the French Consulate.
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Peter Rohs
#75672
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Peter Rohs is a German philosopher. Academic career Born in Jena, Rohs received his doctorate in 1964 from Christian-Albrechts-Universität at Kiel with a thesis on logic by Hegel and habilitated in 1975 at Goethe University in Frankfurt. He was a private lecturer for philosophy since 1975 and from 1985 to 1986 he was managing director of the Forum für Philosophie in Bad Homburg.
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Richard Kilvington
1305 - 1361 (56 years)
Richard Kilvington was an English scholastic theologian and philosopher at the University of Oxford. His surviving works are lecture notes from the 1320s and 1330s. He was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He was involved in a controversy over the nature of the infinite, with Richard FitzRalph, of Balliol College.
Go to Profile#5218
Judah ben Nissim
1260 - Present (766 years)
Judah ben Nissim al-Malkah was a Moroccan, Jewish writer and philosopher living in the 13th century. His main work is Uns al-Gharīb . He also wrote a commentary on the Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer and Tafsīr al-Salawāt, a commentary on liturgy and a work on astrology, which probably bore the title Kitāb al-Miftāh .
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Gerrit Glas
#61152
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gerrit Glas studied Medicine at the University of Amsterdam and Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit. He worked as a psychiatrist at the Ziekenhuis Zwolse Poort in the Netherlands and got his promotion in 1990 on the subject anxiety disorder. Since 1991, he has been a professor of Reformational philosophy at the Universiteit van Leiden. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Christian Philosophy at the VU University Amsterdam. He has written a broad chapter about Anthropology in the book Kennis en werkelijkheid. Glas is associated with the Association for Reformational Philosophy. Along with prof.
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Larry Siedentop
#23238
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Sir Larry Alan Siedentop is an American-born British political philosopher with a special interest in 19th-century French liberalism. He is the author of Democracy in Europe and an occasional contributor to several major British daily newspapers, including the Financial Times and The Times.
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Nicholas Everitt
#73407
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nicholas Everitt is an English philosopher and atheist writer who specializes in epistemology and philosophy of religion. Biography Everitt obtained his degree in Moral Science from University of Cambridge and a postgraduate degree from University of Oxford. He was Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and taught briefly at Fairfield University and Ngee Ann Polytechnic. He taught for the Open University as an Associate Lecturer and after retirement currently teaches the AA308 course, "Thought and Experience – Themes in the Philosophy of Mind" and "The Existence of God...
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Pierre Assouline
#7289
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Pierre Assouline is a French writer and journalist. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco to a Jewish family. He has published several novels and biographies, and also contributes articles for the print media and broadcasts for radio.
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Steve F. Sapontzis
#82714
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Steven Frederic Sapontzis is an American philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay who specializes in animal ethics, environmental ethics and meta-ethics.
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Johann Chrysostom Magnenus
1590 - 1679 (89 years)
Johann Chrysostom Magnenus was a physician and advocate of atomism. He was born at Luxeuil in Burgundy. He took a medical degree at the University of Dôle. He joined the medical faculty at the University of Pavia, where he published his scientific work Democritus reviviscens sive de atomis in 1646. He cited Daniel Sennert, but his ideas were distinct from Sennert's and those of Democritus. He considered that atoms were the indivisible parts of three of the classical elements: earth, water and fire.
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Louis Farrugia
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
Louis Farrugia was a Maltese theologian and minor philosopher. In philosophy he was mostly interested in Scholasticism and literature. No portrait of him has been identified up till now. Life Farrugia was born at Valletta, Malta, in 1857. After becoming a diocesan priest, he occupied various high offices both in the local Catholic Church and at the University of Malta. His ecclesiastical services were recognised by more than one Pope. He was also private secretary to the Bishop of Malta, Peter Pace, and President of the Ecclesiastical Tribunals in Malta.
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Ivica Šola
#88442
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Ivica Šola is a Croatian theologian, communication scientist, columnist and university professor. Šola was born in 1968 in Đakovo. He received a bachelor's degree from University of Zagreb in 1994, a master's degree from Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in 1998, and a doctoral degree in 2012 in Zagreb with a dissertation titled "Ethical aspects of philosophy of Luigi Pareyson: truth, ontos and freedom".
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Björn Dahlbäck
#64871
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Björn Dahlbäck is a Swedish physician, medical researcher, and professor of clinical chemistry, specializing in hematology and the molecular mechanisms of blood coagulation. He determined that activated protein C resistance is the most common inherited risk factor of venous thrombosis.
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Lynne Warner. Stevenson
#5229
Pontormo
1494 - 1556 (62 years)
Jacopo Carucci or Carrucci , usually known as Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo , was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine School. His work represents a profound stylistic shift from the calm perspectival regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine Renaissance. He is famous for his use of twining poses, coupled with ambiguous perspective; his figures often seem to float in an uncertain environment, unhampered by the forces of gravity.
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Pierre Fenaux
#88490
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#5231
Michael Lockwood
#54533
Overall Influence
1950 - 2018 (68 years)
Michael John Lockwood was a British philosopher. Life Lockwood studied philosophy and psychology at Exeter College, Oxford, and did his doctorate at that university under the supervision of A. J. Ayer. For five years he was Assistant Professor in Philosophy at New York University, and was subsequently employed as a systems analyst for the New York and American Stock Exchanges.
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Alexander Kluge
#29628
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Alexander Kluge is a German author, philosopher, academic and film director. Early life, education and early career Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony , Germany. After growing up during World War II, he studied history, law and music at the University of Marburg Germany, and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He received his doctorate in law in 1956.
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Harold A. Netland
#29227
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Harold A. Netland , is a missionary educator turned academic. He is the author or editor of nine books and many journal articles on the topic of religion and philosophy. Career Netland did his undergraduate work at Biola University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University. He worked in Japan for the Evangelical Free Church of America for nine years. In 1993 he moved back to the United States and joined Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Intercultural Studies. He is the Director of the PhD/Intercultural Studies program at 'T...
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Blasius of Parma
1355 - 1416 (61 years)
Blasius of Parma was an Italian philosopher, mathematician and astrologer. He popularised English and French philosophical work in Italy, where he associated both with scholastics and with early Renaissance humanists.
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Harvey Sindima
#49459
Overall Influence
Harvey J Sindima is a Malawian theologian, philosopher, professor and author. He has written extensively on matters of African philosophy, religious ethics and spirituality. He is the original voice behind the Malawian philosophy of personhood: "umunthu". He also works on independent charity project called Blantyre North Relief Project in Blantyre, Malawi with his wife Gertrude Sindima.
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John Francis Fowler
#88577
Overall Influence
#5237
David S. Goldstein
#88585
Overall Influence
#5238
Caspar Barlaeus
1584 - 1648 (64 years)
Caspar Barlaeus was a Dutch polymath and Renaissance humanist, a theologian, poet, and historian. Life Born Caspar van Baerle in Antwerp, Barlaeus' parents fled the city when it was occupied by Spanish troops shortly after his birth. They settled in Zaltbommel, where his father eventually would become head of the Latin school. Caspar studied theology and philosophy at the University of Leiden. After his study, he preached for 1.5 years in the village of Nieuwe-Tonge, before returning to Leiden in 1612 as an under-regent of a college. From 1617 he also was professor in philosophy at the university.
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Dennis Slamon
#10003
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dennis Joseph Slamon , is an American oncologist and chief of the division of Hematology-Oncology at UCLA. He is best known for his work identifying the HER2/neu oncogene that is amplified in 25–33% of breast cancer patients and the resulting treatment trastuzumab.
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Neal S. Young
#88613
Overall Influence
#5241
Gustav Naan
#28372
Overall Influence
1919 - 1994 (75 years)
Gustav Naan was a Soviet and Estonian physicist and philosopher. According to the Estonian Encyclopedia's definition, he "wrote plenty of irritating publicist articles". Personal life Gustav Naan was born in Russian SFSR in a village near Vladivostok to a family of Estonian settlers. He graduated from the Leningrad State University in 1941. He took part in World War II and joined the CPSU in 1943. Having settled to Estonia after the USSR annexed Estonia, Gustav Naan, a loyal communist and graduate of the Higher Party School of the AUCP published a number of Stalinist-oriented polemic pieces .
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Simon the Shoemaker
#43294
Overall Influence
Simon the Shoemaker was an associate of Socrates, and a 'working-philosopher'. He is known mostly from the account given in Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. He is also mentioned in passing by Plutarch and Synesius; a pupil of Socrates, Phaedo of Elis, is known to have written a dialogue called Simon.
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Víctor J. Ferrans
#88622
Overall Influence
#5244
H. W. L. Poonja
#32821
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
Hariwansh Lal Poonja was an Indian sage. Poonja was called "Poonjaji" or "Papaji" by devotees. He was a key figure in the Neo-Advaita movement. Biography Early life At the age of eight, he claimed he had experienced an unusual state of consciousness:
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Guttorm Fløistad
#60828
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Guttorm Fløistad is a Norwegian philosopher. He was born in Arendal as a son of sawmill owner Ivar Fløistad and Thordis Renskaug . He is married to teacher Kirsten Kathrine Kaspersen. He is a grandson of politician Guttorm Fløistad and great-grandson of politician Ivar Guttormsen Fløistad.
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Václav Bělohradský
#25113
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Václav Bělohradský is a Czech philosopher and sociologist. Life and career A graduate in philosophy and Czech from Charles University, Prague, from 1970 to 2010s he lived in Italy, where he was Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Trieste. He is said to be a successor of Jan Patočka. He is a representative of biocentrism, which he developed to refusing anthropocentric overestimation of symbol and culture. He also thinks we need to step back from "us" to be able to lay foundations of new and freer society. He co-participated with Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj Žižek at Monument to Transformation.
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Gerhard Giebisch
#87671
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Gerhard Giebisch was a cellular and molecular physiologist and a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale School of Medicine. He held an M.D. degree from the University of Vienna which he got in 1951. He died on April 6, 2020, aged 93.
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Andrew J. Reck
#57610
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Andrew Joseph Reck was an American philosopher and emeritus professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University. He was a former president of the Metaphysical Society of America. Life He was born on October 29, 1927, in New Orleans to Andrew Gervais and Katie Reck. He married Elizabeth Lassiter Reck in 1987.
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Dan W. Brock
#63304
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Dan W. Brock was an American philosopher, bioethicist, and professor emeritus at Harvard University and Brown University. He was the Frances Glessner Lee Professor Emeritus of Medical Ethics in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the former Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the Harvard Medical School, and former Director of the Harvard University Program in Ethics and Health .
Go to Profile#5250
Nita A. Farahany
#37147
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Nita Farahany is an Iranian American author and distinguished professor and scholar on the ramifications of new technology on society, law, and ethics. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology. She currently teaches Law and philosophy at Duke University where she is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School, the founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society as well as a chair of the Bioethics and Science Policy MA program. She ...
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